Gabe Pressman's career is a tribute to the power and promise of local reporting

As one of the very first television reporters, Gabe Pressman, the dean of New York City political reporters...

As one of the very first television reporters, Gabe Pressman, the dean of New York City political reporters, literally helped invent the visual storytelling we now take for granted. For me and many of my colleagues, he packed and embodied the grit, wit, hustle, insight, accuracy, speed and swagger a big-city journalist should have.

To me, his larger-than-life career stands for the power and promise of local reporting, especially when "local" means telling stories from the literal center of the world. He scored interviews with Fidel Castro, Malcolm X, Eleanor Roosevelt, Golda Meier and 10 different mayors, but in 1982 thought nothing of zeroing in on the death of a homeless woman whose story also needed to be told.

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In September of 1958, when an up-and-coming civil rights leader named Martin Luther King was stabbed in the chest by an emotionally disturbed woman during a visit to Manhattan, Pressman get into Harlem Hospital and scored an exclusive interview with King on camera.

Get to the scene and get the story — first, if possible, but always with accuracy, relevance and speed. That's the job, and it never changes.

Several years later, in the mid-1960s, the now globally famous King slipped into New York to visit some anti-poverty groups in East Harlem. Pressman, again, was the only reporter to catch up with him, and bluntly told the NYPD that the earlier stabbing meant that King should have a security detail.

The cops did as Pressman told them. He was pushing 40 at the time, but later recalled: "I was young and brash in those days."

News is a very horizontal business, especially for street reporters; your final day on the job won't be all that different from what you did on your first day. Pressman, young and brash at 40, was doing coverage of this year's St. Patrick's Day Parade in his 90s.

One of the first, and one of the best (ED BAILEY/AP)

At the 2008 Democratic National Convention in Denver, as a columnist for the News, I remember bumping into Pressman during one of the daily scavenger hunts that news organizations engage in to scrounge up the coveted floor passes needed to move through security checkpoints get onto the convention floor. The trick is to figure out which powerful party chiefs are holding extra passes.

I scored a tip on where to find the hotel suite of Rep. Charles Rangel, who at the time was a heavy hitter in the party as the senior member of the New York delegation and chair of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee.

By the time I got to Rangel's door, prepared to schmooze a bit, get an interview and then ask for a couple of passes, there was Gabe Pressman, sitting in front of the door and waiting for his own audience with Rangel.